Hamas called UN Security Council to stop the Gaza war

“We call on the Security Council, the international community, and all countries around the world to end this brutal war and save the Gaza Strip before it is too late,” the Hamas press office said in a statement.

Fierce fighting continued on Friday from the north to the south of the strip from Gaza, notably in Khan Younes, the main city in the south, where the Israeli army announced that it had taken up a position in the center.

After the first phase of its ground offensive in the north of the territory, in parallel with its campaign of massive air strikes launched on October 7, the army this week extended its ground operations into the south, where hundreds of thousands of now trapped civilians have taken refuge.

The population, faced with a disastrous humanitarian situation, is forced to move within an increasingly confined area to Rafah, along the closed border with Egypt, where thousands of people try to take shelter in makeshift camps.

“Those who survived the bombings are now at imminent risk of dying from hunger and disease,” warned Save the Children and other international NGOs, calling it an “apocalyptic” situation.

The war was triggered by the attack of unprecedented violence, carried out on October 7 on Israeli soil by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza, during which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed according to Israeli authorities, and around 240 others taken hostage. In response to the attack, Israel promised to destroy Hamas, in power since 2007 in the Gaza Strip, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and Israel.

According to the Israeli government, 138 hostages are still being held in Gaza, after the release at the end of November as part of a seven-day truce of 105 people kidnapped, including 80 in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

A total of 93 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting in Gaza, according to the army.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombings left 17,487 dead, more than two-thirds of them women and those under 18, according to a new report published Friday by the Hamas Ministry of Health.

On Friday, the army said, fighting raged particularly in the Khan Younes sector, "an important stronghold of the Hamas terrorist organization."

"We have taken up a position in the center of the city. We are working methodically, precisely, we move from tunnel to tunnel, from house to house, and we hit the terrorists as precisely as possible," Gen. Dan Goldfus, commander of the 98th Division, said in a video message released by the army.

The soldiers discovered an arms depot in a school, and a police station faced with a "catastrophic situation", the United Nations Security Council must decide on Friday on a call for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire", during an extraordinary vote.

But the United States, Israel's main ally in this conflict, is opposed to any although the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, for his part affirmed that “the violence perpetrated by Hamas can in no way justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”.

Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the United Nations Charter on Wednesday, which allows him to "draw the attention of the Security Council" to a matter which "could endanger the maintenance of peace and international security", a first in decades.

The director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), Philippe Lazzarini, also called on Friday for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and to put an end to “the slaughter of Palestinian lives”, while the foreign ministers of several Arab countries called for an “immediate” end to the war.

Since the start of the war, the Security Council managed to pass a resolution that called for "humanitarian pauses and corridors" in Gaza, but not a "ceasefire."

The Security Council's inaction makes it "complicit in the massacre" in the Gaza Strip, Doctors without Borders accused on Friday.

According to the UN, more than half of the homes have been destroyed or damaged by the war in the territory, where 1.9 million people, or 85% of the population, have fled their homes.

The injured continue to flow into hospitals, including many children.

“We were in an area considered safe. (...) After the strike, we suddenly heard screams,” said Mohammed Jaarar, a resident of Khan Younès.

The armed wing of Hamas, for its part, claimed responsibility for new rocket attacks towards Israel, which were mainly intercepted.

Since October 9, Israel has imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip, causing serious shortages of water, food, medicine, and electricity, while humanitarian aid only arrives in trickles. from Egypt.

Fuel, necessary to operate generators in hospitals and water desalination equipment, is also lacking.

 Protect civilians

The United States, despite its firm support for Israel, is increasingly concerned about the heavy Palestinian civilian losses.

“It remains imperative that Israel make the protection of civilians a priority,” declared US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, referring to a “gap” between declared intention and “results”.

Comments supported by President Joe Biden in a telephone interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the White House.

“Things cannot continue as they are,” added German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

The families of the hostages are desperately trying to secure the release of their loved ones. Four representatives of the families are going to Paris on Friday, before Brussels and Strasbourg, to push the Europeans to put pressure on Qatar, the main mediator between the belligerents.

The war has also reignited tensions in the occupied West Bank as well as on the border between Israel and Lebanon, where there are daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.

Three Lebanese soldiers were lightly injured on Friday by Israeli fire in southern Lebanon, according to medical sources, while the Lebanese army reported an Israeli attack on a military hospital, which did not cause any damage or victim.

"The United States supports a lasting peace, where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate ceasefire," said the deputy US ambassador to the UN Robert Wood, before the Security Council.